NEWS: Black Men Walking @ Northern Stage

The compelling and inspiring story comes to Newcastle’s Northern Stage

By Leigh Venus
on Tuesday, February 6th, 2018

Every first Saturday of the month Thomas, Matthew and Richard head out to the rugged realm of the Peak District, ostensibly for health and wellbeing, but really more just to walk and talk. This time however they should have cancelled, as something very different is about to happen to the three friends.

Before they can begin to move forwards they find themselves forcibly compelled to walk backwards, back through two thousand long years of hidden black history in Britain, tracing the path of those who walked and talked England before the English, embedded into the landscape yet we don’t see them.

Taking its inspiration from Sheffield ramblers who began a walking group for black men in 2004, Black Men Walking – at Northern Stage from Thursday 15th until Saturday 17th February – is directed by Eclipse Theatre’s artistic director Dawn Walton and is the first national tour born from Revolution Mix; a three-year movement that explodes the black narrative beyond slavery, immigration and teenage gang crime through seven new touring productions, a series of radio dramas and a film, spearheading the largest ever national delivery of black British stories.

With an original soundtrack by playwright, rapper and beatboxer Testament and starring Tyrone Huggins, Trevor Laird, Tonderai Munyevu and Dorcas Sebuyange, the compelling and constantly surprising Black Men Walking promises to turn a spotlight onto Britain’s missing histories and embed the black experience into the heart of British Theatre.